Fantasy Box Set #3

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The Coen Brothers Set. We want it now.

By IGN Staff

Could there be? Would there be? Will there ever be a Coen Brothers Collection? When I did the first two articles on fantasy box sets on IGN DVD (the first was the Farrelly Brothers Collection and the second the Jimi Hendrix Collection) I got a lot of email from you readers suggesting your own fantasy box sets. I got suggestions from "The Complete Diff'rent Strokes" to "The Jenny McCarthy Collection," but the set that everyone seems to want to see the most is the Coen Brothers Collection.

And with good reason-- the seven films Joel and Ethan Coen have released so far (a new one is on the way this year) are all outstanding, cinematic masterpieces that can only be described as art. Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski? I mean, come on. There's not a bad film in there anywhere, and that's more than you can say for just about any filmmaker.

But as you may have noticed, only four of those titles are in red-- which means they're out on DVD and we've reviewed them on IGN DVD. The rest are MIA, with no release dates scheduled for any of them at the moment.

So there's that hurdle. Before there can be a box set, there are three titles-- three significant titles that CANNOT be left out-- that have to get the digital treatment.

What about the ones that are already out? Are they box set-worthy?

Uh, not really. The only one of these discs that really has any special features to speak of is The Big Lebowski-- it has a 30-minute interview with the Coen Brothers about the making of the movie, which is the closest thing there is yet to a Coen Brothers commentary track.

So it's obvious that any Coen Brothers Collection would have to have anamorphic transfers, 5.1 sound (or DTS, even better), and commentary tracks on each movie. It would be cool to see such a set follow the example of the James Bond discs by having a featurette on each one that's on a facet of the Brothers' movies, a common thread if you will, rather than the typical "I loved working with John Goodman"-type featurette that most DVDs get.

So it's not looking too good so far-- there are two movies that need better soundtracks and better transfers, three that need better extras, all four need commentary tracks, and then there are the three that aren't even out yet. But this is not the problem that's going to ultimately keep The Coen Brothers Collection from ever coming out...

It's legal issues. The rights. (That suddenly reminded me of Walter saying, "My dirty undies Dude. The whites.") All these movies are owned by different video companies at this time:

Blood Simple isn't out on DVD, but its rights are currently held by Universal;

Raising Arizona is a Fox property (the one bright spot here is that the Raising Arizona DVD has trailers for Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink "coming soon on DVD," meaning that Fox probably has the rights to those two as well);

So for a Coen Brothers collection to come out, one of the companies would have to either buy or license the rights, and for seven movies that's probably a lot of cash. Since the only company that owns more than one title is Fox (with three), they would have the easiest time making it happen, but that's only relatively speaking.

Even the brothers' newest film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is on still another label, Buena Vista, so there's no end in sight to the red tape problem here.

It's a real pity that they can't make this happen, because there's not a doubt in my mind that a nice-looking boxed set with all 7 (or 8, if O Brother was included) films, even if the price tag was $200, would sell like hotcakes. And then we film freaks would have 7 or 8 of the best films made in the last 20 years. But alas, it's not to be.

I would suggest buying all the existing Coen DVDs and make your own boxed set, but the only disc that's really good enough in all departments to recommend (if you've got the other films on VHS that is) is The Big Lebowski. The rest of them will probably be revisited at some point as Special Editions-- for the life of me I couldn't tell you why Fargo is movie-only, and it's only a matter of time before someone at the top agrees with me.

And for that matter, it's only a matter of time before someone at the top decides a nicely-packaged Coen Brothers Collection would look great on his shelf, and make it happen. Have faith-- it should happen by the end of the 21st century.

-- Alex Castle's favorite Coen Brothers film is The Big Lebowski. Say what you want about the tenets of nationalized socialism-- at least it's an ethos, Dude.